Alarm Will Sound Performs Donnacha Dennehy's THE HUNGER

Alarm Will Sound tours the concert version of Donnacha Dennehy's modern cantata The Hunger to Princeton Sound Kitchen on September 17, 2019 and to Merkin Hall in collaboration with Irish Arts Center on September 19, 2019, part of Ecstatic Music's 10th anniversary season.

Rooted in the emotional, political, and socioeconomic devastation of Ireland's Great Famine (1845-52), The Hunger features Alarm Will Sound with soprano Katherine Manley and sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird. The Irish folk music narrative is interwoven with personal, historical accounts, where the libretto principally draws from first-hand accounts by Asenath Nicholson, an American humanitarian so moved by the waves of immigrants arriving in New York that she travelled to Ireland to report from the cabins of starving families.

Alarm Will Sound tours The Hunger to Princeton University, where Dennehy is a Professor of Music and Ó Lionáird is a Global Scholar, on Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 8:00pm. Presented by Princeton Sound Kitchen at Richardson Auditorium, the cantata will be paired with performances of compositions by Princeton graduate students Pascal Le Boeuf, Jenny Beck, Alyssa Weinberg, Tom Morrison, Connor Way, and Bora Yoon.

On Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 7:30pm, Kaufman Music Center presents Alarm Will Sound at Merkin Hall. In collaboration with Irish Arts Center, the program features The Hunger paired with When Fire is Allowed to Finish by Queens-based artist Alexandra Drewchin (A.K.A. Eartheater). Eartheater distills foley-filled digital production and classical composition into works suspended between reckless romanticism and precisely detailed sonic tapestries. When Fire is Allowed to Finish is comprised of six emotionally charged movements arranged by composers Aaron Parker, Steve Snowden, and Conrad Winslow and was premiered in May 2018. Irish Arts Center presents a 20-minute post-performance discussion to touch on the historical and cultural aspects of The Hunger in relation to how food insecurity is still a part of contemporary life.

Of the piece, Dennehy says, "To counterpoint Asenath Nicholson's outsider, Anglo-American perspective, I invented an elderly Irish character, written for the sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird. I built the old man's part from shards of one of the few songs in the sean-nós (old style) tradition to address the unfolding catastrophe, Na Prátaí Dubha (Black Potatoes), and a keening lament for a dead child that I first heard in an unaccompanied version by the astounding Donegal singer Cití Ní Ghallachóir. Gradually, as The Hunger evolves, Nicholson's narrative line starts to assimilate some of the sean-nós material of the old man, mirroring the way that Nicholson began to cross the threshold from observer to empathetic participant. She ran her own soup kitchen briefly and became an activist, writing pleading letters to her important friends in both the States and England, seeking action that would ameliorate the deteriorating conditions for the Irish peasant class. The sense of how incapable bureaucracy is at dealing with a quickly transforming crisis, and how that bureaucracy can be used as a screen for being unfeeling, is implied by the narrative that Asenath tells of the old man's dealings with the hunger relief station, and the way the music surges and fades, embodying the old man's Sisyphean task."

Alarm Will Sound releases a recording of The Hunger on Friday, August 23, 2019 on Nonesuch Records. The program travels to Boston's Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory for a September 20, 2019 performance in partnership with Oxfam America, a global organization working to end the injustice of poverty. All net proceeds from the Boston performance will be donated to Oxfam.

The staged version of The Hunger was commissioned by Alarm Will Sound and premiered at BAM's Next Wave Festival in 2016. The project received financial assistance from New Music USA, The MAP Fund, and the Arts Council of Ireland.

Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents The Hunger
Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 8:00pm
Richardson Auditorium | 68 Nassau St | Princeton, NJ 08542
Tickets: FREE. RSVPs encouraged at music.princeton.edu
Link: https://music.princeton.edu/events/alarm-will-sound

Ecstatic Music: Alarm Will Sound
Thursday, September 19, 2019 at 7:30pm
Merkin Hall | 129 W 67th Street | New York, NY 10036
Tickets: General Admission $35; Students with ID $15
Link: https://tickets.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/single/eventDetail.aspx?p=4259

Alarm Will Sound may be heard on fifteen recordings, including its most recent, Omnisphere with Medeski Martin and Wood, and the premiere of Steve Reich's Radio Rewrite. Acoustica, their genre-bending, critically-acclaimed album, features live-performance arrangements of music by electronica guru Aphex Twin. For more information, visit Alarm Will Sound's website at www.alarmwillsound.com

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